


Warming Up

by Nym



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, International Fanworks Day 2016, Skin Deep Anniversary, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-13
Updated: 2016-02-13
Packaged: 2018-05-20 04:47:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5992135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nym/pseuds/Nym
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At the Dark Castle, Rumpelstiltskin does something that's very nearly romantic, and Belle feels something that's very nearly love.  A ficlet in honour of the anniversary of "Skin Deep", International Fanworks Day, and of St Valentine's Day.</p><p>
  <em>Slowly, week upon week and discovery after discovery, out of conflict and compassion and curiosity, Belle has begun to burn for him.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Warming Up

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to [Luthien]() for giving this the once-over. Anywhere remaining where I've mucked up the present/past tense is my own bleary fault.
> 
> **None of my fanfiction may be reposted or otherwise shared elsewhere, including translations and audio recordings, unless you have my written consent. Using my occasional original ideas/characters in your own fanfic, to make your own words or art or whatever, is fine with me.**

Belle is up to her elbows in soap suds when Rumpelstiltskin casts a spell on her. She squeaks her surprise as the sensation tingles over her skin, just this side of uncomfortable. By the time it passes, and with it the slight disorientation and the taste of metal in her mouth, Belle has on a brand new dress. The sleeves stop at her shoulders in a dainty puff of white chiffon, while a sturdy white apron conceals most of the rest from her questioning gaze. She can feel the weight of a cloak at her throat, but it's thrown behind her out of the way of the water. She can tell that it's a warm one.

He giggles at her, so pleased with himself, and strikes a pose beside the washing copper. Belle briefly considers striking at his smirk with the long wooden paddle she's been using to dunk his shirts in the steaming water, but she's too grateful for the dry dress and the practical apron. He cuts in before she can collect herself and thank him.

"Normally I'd ask before removing a lady's clothing," he tells her in a loud whisper, shielding his mouth with one hand as though the forest might overhear him being indelicate. "But you looked so chilly."

"I was wet through." Belle hefts the paddle in both hands and pokes at his floating, steaming laundry. She knows by now that there's no use in protesting about the way he spies on her. She's come to find it rather flattering now that she knows that he watches out of interest rather than mistrust. When his back is turned, she often watches him too. "It's freezing out here." She almost asks him why he doesn't lower himself to dealing with his own housework by magic, but bites that back as well. She knows why. She already knows exactly why she's here, why he wanted a housekeeper at all, and the knowledge is enough to counteract the poison of her resentment. "My dress was still damp from last time."

Expecting a smartly issued barb in return, Belle instead sees him hide his consternation beneath a mask of aloof disregard. It doesn't fool her.

"Can't have you dying on me. Hurry back and make up all the fires when you're done. The castle is freezing." Lest she chance showing him that she knows the command to be a kindly one, Rumpelstiltskin jabs a black-nailed finger at her in warning. "Don't let my home get so cold again."

He vanishes in a puff of smoke. There doesn't need to be a puff of smoke; she's seen him vanish and appear without any sign at all. But Rumpelstiltskin likes to put on a show and he so relishes his entrance and his exit.

Belle can guess that she'll return to find each and every log basket groaning with cut wood and kindling, ready to lighten the chore. He doesn't even feel the cold as far as she's been able to discover, but he does enjoy warming his boots beside a roaring fire. Sometimes he holds out his hands towards the flames as though to warm them, only to become captivated by the sensation and stare at them for minutes on end. Rumpelstiltskin seems capable of feeling only when he's caught off guard.

The laundry takes her the rest of the afternoon. She's sodden again as she trudges back to the castle through the last of the year's melting snow, but she can wrap the cloak of brown wool tightly about her, put up the deep hood and keep off the chill. It's much better than before, but she longs for her room and a good fire.

Until recently, her room was a stark cell in the dungeon. He found that amusing until he tired of pretending not to care for her wellbeing. Now Belle has two rooms to enjoy, one above the other, and one of them is a library that he furnished for her enjoyment. Oh, he tells her it's so that she can dust the books, catalogue them for his convenience and research when he can't be bothered, but Belle knows that he allows her the library out of a kindness that has become a kind of fondness. Or perhaps the other way around. She's never quite sure.

The room beneath the library is her bedroom. A lively log fire is already going in the grate, where Belle knows that she left only warm ashes behind her this morning. Rumpelstiltskin must have seen to it. On the four-poster bed that dominates most of the small chamber there's another change of clothing, near identical to what she's wearing except for long sleeves. There are neat silvered shoes to replace her soggy furred boots and, wrapped up in coloured silk cloth and tied with a satin bow, an array of brand new unmentionables.

That brings stinging tears to her eyes, a lump to her throat. Belle doesn't know whether they come because he thought to offer her new comforts in her new home, or because shyness and reserve drove him to wrap these particular items away out of sight rather than leave them on the coverlet with the rest. She's noticed that _his_ intimate garments never appear in her laundry pile, and has wondered more often than she'd care to admit whether he actually wears anything at all beneath those flattering breeches of skin-tight leather.

Her sudden shiver has nothing to do with the cold. She suddenly feels quite warm from the inside.

She changes quickly into the dry clothes, choosing the heaviest flannel petticoat to go under the light skirt of blue linen. Compared to the stiff and sweeping golden dress she's been living in all these weeks, the very plainness feels like a luxury. Thick woollen stockings are heaven, even if they do look a little strange when she stuffs her feet into the dainty new shoes. He's even thought to give her nightclothes, one nightdress of heavy cotton and another of soft flannel, each with a matching embroidered cap. He really does mean for his servant to be warm from now on, because he doesn't want to lose her to sickness any more than he would allow her to escape.

Belle wants to look at herself in a mirror before going on about her evening chores, but that is the one thing the Dark Castle lacks. Her room has no mirror. Such mirrors as there are in the castle stay shrouded in tapestries, so much does Rumpelstiltskin dislike his own reflection. And that makes her sad for him, for what he must see in himself. He's hardly ugly, except when he snarls and lets his eyes grow truly cold; his rage is a brutal and ugly thing, it's true, but he's well proportioned, and his features are merely...

Even now, Belle hasn't the words. She'll choose one—scaly, harsh, strange, rough, odd, green, _inhuman_ —only to second-guess her choice and return to pondering. And only then, only later, she'll ruefully realise that she's never before spent any time at all considering a man's looks, but that suddenly she does it all the time. And that doing so leaves a little hot glowing ember inside her that even his tantrums and his petty spite and the occasional murderous rage can't extinguish.

Slowly, week upon week and discovery after discovery, out of conflict and compassion and curiosity, Belle has begun to burn for him.

Once every inhabited room has a well-lit fire, Belle goes to the kitchen to prepare his tea. The meals she brings to him are barely touched; in fact, he eats so little that she thinks that he takes meals as a matter of routine rather than out of any bodily necessity. Certainly they give him little pleasure. But he does like his tea, and not just any old handful of leaves tossed into hot water. He grows and gathers his favourite herbs by hand; he hangs, dries and strips the leaves with as much care as he takes over the ingredients for a magical potion, and commands her to tell him at once if the tea jars in the kitchen run low.

There's a new tea on the shelf today, one of his occasional acquisitions from over the seas. Even with all his gold the quantities he buys are small and so she treats them as precious. Belle sighs to herself as she unwraps the bright paper packet and empties it into a clean jar to sit with the rest. These leaves are withered and dark and the smell is exotic, reminding her of all the places she's never been and will never go. Not now. This castle is all the world she'll ever know. Not that Gaston would have stood for it either, if she'd married him instead of coming here. Gaston barely coped with the fact that his betrothed spoke before she was spoken to; he was positively terrified when he discovered that she had opinions. For all his pettiness, all his cruelties and all that dark, dark magic, at least Rumpelstiltskin looks Belle in the eye with due respect for her capability; he doesn't much _like_ her opinions, but he isn't mortified to discover that she has some. Whenever the menial tasks he sets her seem too heavy for a woman working alone, Belle takes strength from the fact that he doesn't think so, or say so, and she would never swallow her pride enough to say so herself. She simply does as he instructs her and relishes the discovery that she _can_. She's beginning to feel that she could manage anything all by herself.

It must count as a sort of adventure, she supposes, as she carries the laden tray carefully up the stairs. She lives under the same roof as the Dark One, in a castle where magic can make even the location of doors and walls somewhat unpredictable, and the opening of pots and boxes a gamble with one's life. She never sees another living soul—she's strictly forbidden to show herself when anyone calls on him—but sometimes Rumpelstiltskin will stop spinning and say something to her that isn't required by the running of his household. Sometimes he'll stop everything and listen to her, and where Belle fears she's merely prattling out of nervous excitement, he takes in everything she says and wears the softest of little smiles.

Day upon day, she tries to earn herself another glimpse of that elusive smile. But Rumpelstiltskin is sad even then. He'll never be drawn on it. He never acknowledges it, but he doesn't need to. Belle can see well enough that he carries some terrible weight upon him. She can see that his heart has long been frozen, and is immodest enough to realise that she herself has made him thaw a little. Thinking about that makes her shiver, too.

At this hour he's normally busy at his spinning wheel, but Belle finds him beside the fire instead, with his legs crossed at the ankles and his hands resting on the arms of the chair. He turns his head slightly as she enters, then looks into the flames again, expressionless. That blankness terrified her at first, but Belle is used to him now. His silence, his stillness, are his acceptance. In public he prances and twirls and claps his hands, and he plays tricks with words. A grand performance. In private, when he has nothing to say, Rumpelstiltskin says nothing and keeps himself contained. Sometimes, rarely, it could be mistaken for peace.

Belle slides the tray onto the long, empty table and turns to go, conscious of a pang of disappointment at the prospect of an evening alone. How quickly she's come from hardly bearing his presence to missing his company! It's then, for the first time, that she suspects that she loves him. It's but a flicker where a flame could grow, a spark in the dry tinder of her dull, dutiful past and the scorched hopes of her future. Perhaps it's desire, not love, or perhaps it's both; the spark of it sits in her heart but also wanders lower down sometimes and begets that special sort of shiver. She's never shivered for thinking of anyone else. She's never had this warming glow inside her before. She likes it.

"Stay a while," calls Rumpelstiltskin, a plea where there might have been a command, and her spirits lift at once.

She brings two cups of black tea and joins him at the fireside, kneeling in a warm puddle of petticoats on the hearthrug. It wouldn't occur to him to notice that he has only one chair at his fireside, so Belle sits on the floor or perches on his dining table whenever she joins him, half-consciously teasing him with her easy grace in the face of his expectations. He is capable of the gestures of smooth chivalry, but she much prefers it when he's simply clumsy and _himself_.

"Thank you for the clothing."

"That dress was as good as rags." He's gruff even when he's gracious. Belle likes the gruffness now that she knows how to listen for what's behind it. "Tell me if you need anything else."

Belle smiles, and for the first time she sees how her smile takes him; how quickly he hides his eyes behind long lashes, his lips resting halfway between a smirk and a grimace of embarrassment. She toys with the thought of asking him for some extra underwear just to see the expression on his face, but thinks better of it and simply says, "Thank you."

The silence comes back and they both sip their tea slowly, Rumpelstiltskin as ever using the cup that she chipped on her first attempt at serving him. Belle remembers when she thought he asked for it to spite her, to remind her of her failure and to tease her for being highly born and unused to service. Now she knows better, and sees how it contents him to share the familiar with her, and this undemanding silence.

Full of questions, Belle says nothing. Not this time. Not yet. She stays warm by the fireside and keeps him company in his silence until it's time for her to go to bed, where her heart breeds fresh, new hopes for tomorrow.


End file.
